How to Make a Robotic Dinosaur (& Other Assorted Beasts): Confessions of a Dinosaur Doula
Summary:
A career in puppetry, animatronics, & immersive theme park experiences has given Michael Schupbach the answers to all sorts of questions about his creatures that blink, roar, & bound across arenas!
Description:
How do you teach someone to drive a full-scale T-rex? How much free will should we give the robotic Banshee from Avatar? These are the questions Michael Schupbach loves to answer. With a career spanning puppetry, animatronics, & immersive theme park experiences, his creatures have roared, blinked, & bounded across arenas & sound stages around the world. From baby dinos in Jurassic World Live, to the Banshee in Avatar the Experience, to Baby Banshees at D23, Schupbach's creations mix engineering & storytelling. In this fast-paced & funny talk, learn how scrappy experimentation fuels high-tech innovation, & how old-school puppet skills still shape cutting-edge creature design. Whether you're a builder, performer, fan, or just want to know what its like to make a Dilophosaurus spit, this session will leave you with a deeper appreciation for the art& chaosof bringing beasts to life.
Puppet building pros with seriously great credits will talk about various puppet building techniques, such as the wedge method, flat patterning, sculpting, and more!
All puppeteers of color and allies are welcome to this seminar as we discuss the highs and lows of what it means to be a puppeteer from a different culture.
Description:
While puppetry is a beautiful and inclusive artistry, in recent years, the push for visible racial diversity is at an all time high. This panel is a safe space to discuss what progress the puppetry community has made in making POCs (Puppeteers of Color) feel comfortable in creative spaces, as well as what the community needs to work on to make it that much more inviting to those who feel outnumbered in the room where it happens.
Directing for puppetry has different challenges than directing actors. We'll be discussing techniques and tips on making sure your puppet projects looks as professional as possible.
How Did I Get to Sesame Street? 40 Years on the Street
Summary:
Join Pam Arciero for a retrospective of her time on Sesame Street & others including Between the Lions, Allegra's Window, Blue's Clues - Blue's Room, & Eureeka's Castle and many more!
Pro puppet builders will discuss the various types of mouth-plate construction with methods and benefits of each. (That's the bit that the puppeteer holds onto inside a puppet.) Come ask questions!
Puppeteers of Color: Making Puppetry an Inclusive Art
Summary:
All puppeteers of color and allies are welcome to this seminar as we discuss the highs and lows of what it means to be a puppeteer from a different culture.
Description:
While puppetry is a beautiful and inclusive artistry, in recent years, the push for visible racial diversity is at an all time high. This panel is a safe space to discuss what progress the puppetry community has made in making POCs (Puppeteers of Color) feel comfortable in creative spaces, as well as what the community needs to work on to make it that much more inviting to those who feel outnumbered in the room where it happens.
Building a Better Hand Puppet - Tips and Techniques
Summary:
The internet is filled with patterns & pictures of fleecy friends, but if you want to build your own characters, you need an approach that that gives you strong results & makes your puppet expressive.
Description:
Puppets are not sculptures, they need to move! Building a puppet that moves well, stays light, and won’t break is the real key. We will look at the function of each part of the puppet, and then explore some tried and true ways that I have been building puppets for decades. Greg Ballora will emphasize taking a drawing and creating an easy blueprint that leads to success! For more than 30 years, Greg has been a Los Angeles-based puppet builder & performer. He has puppeteered with the Muppets, Henson’s Puppet Up, & was the Puppet Captain on Disney’s Crash & Bernstein. Greg has also been a Puppet Master for the Disneyland Resort, building puppets, training puppeteers, teaching students & creating parade choreography for puppets & large floats. Greg has taught puppet construction & performance at UCLA, Pepperdine University, Penn State & Cal Arts.